Minimally invasive surgery is a procedure in which surgical instruments are inserted through an access port, a tubular structure, a retractor, or a cannula into the body of a patient. A known minimally invasive surgery allows longitudinal members, such as rods, to be connected to vertebrae of a spinal column through an access port. The rods interconnect adjacent vertebrae of the spinal column. While the above described method enables adjacent vertebrae of a spinal column to be fixed relative to each other, the interconnecting of the longitudinal members has heretofore been conducted by a much more invasive open surgical method.